Facebook interferes with what people see and don't see; profits off hate, former employee tells Delhi Assembly panel

Facebook influences and aids a lot of violence to continue, the misinformation to go on, says March S Luckie

A former Facebook employee, Marck S Luckie, on Thursday deposed digitally before a Delhi Assembly committee probing the social media giant and claimed that the platform interferes with what people see and don't see and it was "profiting off hate".

His deposition came as part of the Delhi Assembly's Committee on Peace and Harmony, which is conducting a probe against Facebook following allegations that it did not adhere to its own policy on taking down hate posts by some BJP supporters fearing that it will anger the saffron party and adversely affect its business in India. The panel also felt that Facebook was complacent in taking down posts that aided the Delhi riots.

"Facebook is not telephone or email...They (Facebook) change the algorithm. It allows certain content to stay up and certain content to be taken down. So Facebook does influence and aid a lot of this violence to continue, the misinformation to go on," Lucky said in response to a query by panel head and AAP MLA Raghav Chadha.

Unfortunately, people are dying because of it and that was something that needs to be stopped, he added.

Luckie, who left the social media giant in November 2018 claiming that it inculcates a misguided work system within the company which has led to division in communities, said Facebook "actively interferes" with what people "see and don't see".

Asked whether the business model of Facebook factored in the virality of posts, which majorly feeds on content, Luckie answered in the affirmative.

"Unfortunately, hateful and divisive content often has the most shares, likes or comments which are the metrics that Facebook uses to determine whether to show (a particular) content or not...yes, Facebook is profiting off of hate,” he said.

Asked whether Facebook could proactively act during the Delhi riots, he said, "Contents that call for violence are escalated to the supervisors depending on the number of flags by the users...The bigger the news story, the more global or national incident, the more likely it is that a higher level of executives is engaged."

Luckie also claimed that top managerial posts at Facebook are conferred to persons who have strong governmental associations or political affiliations.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg also partakes in various liaisons with different parties across the globe in order to earn special benefits or favour, Luckie said, claiming that repeated interference of the top heads of the Facebook teams, including their policy heads at the instance of the political parties, upon the content moderation teams which have led to an eventual compromise in the execution of their own community standards.

"Repeated interference of the top heads of Facebook on content moderating teams has led to compromising on community guidelines. Facebook would like the world to believe that it is politically agnostic to maintain a safe image however, it isn’t as agnostic as it claims to be," he added.

Earlier, Facebook India Vice President and Managing Director Ajit Mohan had refused to appear before the panel saying it had no jurisdiction. He had also gone to Supreme Court, which ruled in his favour saying that the panel cannot take coercive action against him.

The panel had earlier examined journalists and activists like Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Nikhil Pahwa, Awesh Tiwari Kunal Purohit, Prabir Purkayastha and Pratik Sinha.